Ancient Pines

As dark shapes on the far horizon, nothing could be more like Galloway than a massive scots pine tree - but is it possible to plant the new ancient trees of the future?

Cast in wracks of sunlight and larksong, the broken silhouettes of scots pine trees seem to stand on every far horizon in Galloway. The moorland scene is hardly complete without some mound of stones and the sudden, upright plunge of a centuries-old pine above them. A handful of these monstrous trees can be found around every upland farm; usually alone, but sometimes in groups of seven or eight at a time. Each one is utterly unique, and if the coastal pines are driven to lean away from the sea by the wind, trees around the moorland fringe are often cracked and burst apart by snow.

Some of these ancient monsters might have stood knee-high to Bonnie Prince Charlie when he came sleeking into Dumfries, and in the setting of Speyside or Loch Rannoch, these trees would nowadays be called “granny pines”. The same word draws a blank in Galloway, because it suggests that these trees belong to a continuity of woodland cover - but you can’t be a granny until your children have had children, and there is no understorey of young pine trees emerging through the undergrowth in Galloway. Eaten back to silent isolation by generations of grazing and neglect, they’re more like ancient orphans dressed in ravens’ nests.